The World Is Yours

Motörhead

The World Is Yours - Fairly Good, Based on 7 Critics

PopMatters - 70Based on rating 7/10

70

The great, indomitable Ian “Lemmy” Kilmister turned 65 mere weeks before the North American release of Motörhead’s 20th album. And bless him, not a single thing has changed over the course of his band’s 35 year history. He and his mates still crank out the same ultra-high-decibel rock ‘n’ roll that won us over the first time we heard 1912, Orgasmatron, No Remorse, Ace of Spades, Overkill—It’s deafening; it’s abrasive, and it’s absolutely invigorating, and even when Lemmy creatively stagnates a touch, the music is nevertheless loads of fun.

The common misconception about Motörhead is that they've been recording the same album over and over again for 30-plus years, but nothing could be further from the truth. Just ask the band's most discerning, long-serving fans and they'll eagerly wax poetic about the nuanced distinctions between, say, the amphetamine blues of Overkill, the blazing Spaghetti Western slugfests of Ace of Spades, the bruising metallic crush of Orgasmatron, or the thrash-fueled onslaught of Sacrifice. If anything -- and not even these die-hard fans can deny this -- one could say that the band's albums released from the late ‘90s onward began blending together somewhat, for lack of cohesive personalities and enough quality songs.

[a]Motorhead[/a]’s previous album, 2008’s ‘[b]Motörizer[/b]’, found [b]Lemmy[/b] and comrades striving to maintain their bad-ass reputation at the mercy of a sterile production and a bunch of frankly mediocre songs. Thankfully, on ‘[b]The World Is Yours[/b]’ the band sound more engaged than they have in some time. The perennial music crit line with [a]Motorhead[/a] is that every album sounds much the same.

The same driving, bluesy rock they’ve been spewing since the Paleozoic Era During a recent nine-hour drive, this hack and his mates decided the complete Motörhead discography would be the perfect accompaniment. It was quickly realised that there’s better chance of finding Iraqi weapons of mass destruction than unlistenable ‘Head. While there may not be an ‘Ace Of Spades’ classic on ‘The Wörld Is Yours’ (and judging the scene at any rock night the world over, there never will be), their 20th teems with the same driving, bluesy rock they’ve been spewing since the Paleozoic Era.

Review Summary: Rock and roll: Warts and all.Death and taxes? Another sure thing you can add to that shortlist is that Motörhead will always be on hand to deliver a short, sharp dose of dirty noise. Now on their 20th LP, Motörhead have yet to relent on their quest to blow the minds and ears of their baying audience. Sticking to a strict schedule of an album every two years since 1996’s Overnight Sensation, the circus rolls on with reckless abandon and despite their advancing years you feel as if Motörhead will outlive us all.Lately, Lemmy appears to have been inducted into the Hall of Elder Statesmen.

"You wouldn't believe what it was like then," Ian "Lemmy" Kilmister recently informed a young journalist. "If you could go back, you wouldn't come back here." It's worth noting that the burnished and halcyon era to which he refers is 1975 – the year of race riots in Leeds, Margaret Thatcher's election to the leadership of the Conservative party, and 261 deaths in terrorist attacks related to the Troubles in Northern Ireland, in both mainland Britain and Northern Ireland itself. On the plus side, of course, you could smoke in pubs.

Ian Kilmister, aka Lemmy, is the sole constant member of the British rock band, MotÃ¶rhead. This man is a vocalist, a bassist, a rock god in circles, and he is aging, like all living things are wont to do. Sooner or later, we will see the demise of this metal figurehead, but as with any bastion of the early heavies, a reign must not simply burn out, but fucking explode in a glorious inferno.